It’s Furious Balancing

I finished the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest from Stefanie Japel’s Fitted Knits collection. I do think that she is my favorite knitwear designer.¹ I was able to wear the finished vest to the office in this lovely 60-degree spring weather. This is probably the last time I’ll be able to wear one of my handknits until October. I got a lot of compliments on my creation, even though I arsed-up the back neckline.

In any event, this FO is dedicated to Eowyn, Shieldmaiden of the Rohirrim. The styling reminds me a little of Eowyn’s dress in The Two Towers.² I’ve been watching The Lord of the Rings (yes, again), but with the cast commentary audio instead of the regular movie audio.³ I did a lot of knitting while sitting on the couch watching those extended edition DVD’s.

It took about 3 weeks from start to finish. I only did minor modifications from the published pattern. The most important one was narrowing the shoulder straps. Many people commented on Ravelry that they felt they were too wide, so I reduced them down to 12 stitches. There were 14 in the pattern, so that’s not much; I was uncertain about making them any narrower than that.

I Kitchener stitched the shoulder seams instead of doing a three-needle bind off. I’ve done the three-needle bind off before, on the Tempting sweater, so I thought I should try something different.

I reduced the number of rows on the picked-up stitches for the neck and armholes. The pattern called for 3 purl rows, 3 knit rows, then 3 purl rows again. Way too much for my tastes. I did three purl rows only on the armholes and three purl rows and one additional knit row on the neck (just to spruce up the neck a bit and make it slightly different than the arms). I think all those additional rows on the neck and arms called for in the pattern would give it too much of a “Judy Jetson” feel — definitely not my style.

The final modification was the increases used for the bust darts. The pattern called for lifted increases, which are different from make 1’s (even though I find a lot of people who think they’re the same stitch). I wasn’t comfortable with my messy, miserable-looking lifted increases and used mirrored make 1 increases instead. Look! a close-up of Laiane’s tits!

I used two and a half skeins of Cascade 220 in Walnut Heather (Color # 8013, approx. 550 yards) and my size 7 and size 5 Knit Picks interchangeable circular needles in Harmony Wood⁴

All in all, a good pattern, a somewhat flattering finished object, and something I can actually wear in public.

Forth Eorlingas.

* * * * *

1. Boy, how geeky is that to have a favorite knitting pattern designer. Yeesh. I am obviously beyond hope. [↩]
2. I’ve found entire web pages dedicated to this dress. [↩]
3. I’ve also been watching the documentary-style stuff that came with the extended edition DVD’s. LOTR overload. I’m just happy I haven’t been talking like Gollum in public. My precious… [↩]
4. Those are very sexy needles, by the way. I wasn’t very impressed when I saw them in the printed catalog. Too garish. I managed to see some up close during my January pilgrimage to see Franklin at ThreadBear, and fell in love with them. So sturdy! So smooth! 100 times better than the Denise Interchangeables I have, in my exceedingly humble opinion. [↩]

As the weather warms up, I’m becoming more and more aware of how much I hate the summer and how much I am not looking forward to months of unrelenting heat and blinding sunlight. I can enjoy the milder weather we’re having now, the lilacs and forget-me-nots, but there’s this Impending Doom lurking just around the corner.

Michigan summers suck.

I’ve decided that the best way for me to cope with my Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder is with Wellbutrin and lots and lots of fall/winter knitting projects. I can stay in the house, crank the air conditioning, and play with yarn; before you know it the outside will be clean and cold again and it will be time to wear some lovely, bright, handknit hats and scarves with my austere black winter coat.

For now, you get pictures from the backyard. The one positive thing I can say for the warmer weather is there is better lighting for photographing the Finished Objects. As always, click the pretty pictures to make them bigger.

This is the One-Day Beret from Through the Loops done up in Noro Silk Garden Chunky. I finished the bind-off on the drive home from ThreadBear.¹ It was a tad on the large-ish side, so I did a quick hot wash/cold rinse to tighten it up. That and a few minutes in the dryer did the trick.

Despite the “purple mushroom” comment, I do love this hat. It’s going to go hide in the sweater bags in the closet with the cedar sachets and the rest of the Yarn Stash until November or so.

I wish I could do the same. Pass the Wellbutrin.

1. There will pictures of the haul from ThreadBear up here soon. There was cashmere and alpaca involved, both on sale. [↩]

I’ve been slogging along on the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest from Fitted Knits. I’m actually progressing through it fairly quickly, so slogging is not the most apt word to describe what I’m doing. Maybe I’m actually knitting. Really knitting, like with darts and shaping and everything! Who’d a thunk it?

I am, however, a crappy photographer and a crappy Paint Shop Pro user. /sigh

Click here to go see a larger picture, but I don’t think it improves much. I have been spending the last hour trying to get the text to wrap and make this look halfway decent on the page layout.  No dice.  If I upload this via “add media” in WordPress, there’s no way to remove the vest picture from the gallery with Chrissy’s pictures below (unless I delete the vest picture entirely) .  If I link to my uploaded image on Flickr, there’s no way to get the text to wrap since you have to “add media” to get the text wrap feature to work.

The orange markers are for the bust darts (which are somewhat visible), but it’s hard to envision the finished project unless you look at it on a real person. ¹

I should be able to model it in the near future — depending on how much Cat Help I get. I’ve been picking cat hair out of this project for a while now. Predominantly brown cat hair with black ticking.

Who could that possibly be?

1. I found some pics from other bloggers, here and here. [↩]

Or rather, Daffodils and Detectives, since I’m going to talk about the daffodils first and then do a ham-handed segue into my latest fan grrrl obsession with a British detective show.

First, flowers. It’s springtime in my little corner of the world and even though I dislike warm weather and I suffer from horrendous allergies, I’m able to enjoy the flowers when they arrive. After the monochrome winter, seeing some life and color in the backyard is a treat.

We have cherry blossoms, some wildly overgrown forsythia, and a few daffodils:

Every time — and I do mean almost every time — I think of the word springtime, I start hearing Springtime for Hitler in my head.

And now it’s…
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We’re marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Rhineland’s a fine land once more!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Watch out, Europe
We’re going on tour!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany!

I hope you’re familiar with Mel Brooks’ The Producers and don’t think I’m being terribly non-PC¹ here. Springtime for Hitler is intentionally non-PC; that was its raison d’etre.

But anyway.

This leads me in to my next topic - a British detective program set in the South coast of Britain during the early days of World War II. It’s Foyle’s War, and I’ve become a complete and utter Fan Grrrl for it in general and for Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle in particular.

I started watching Foyle’s War because it was on my Netflix “we thought you would enjoy this” list. I was looking for dialogue-heavy movies and TV shows so I could sit on the couch and knit and not necessarily be glued to the TV screen.

I was hooked immediately by the attention to detail. I’m a World War II history dilettante, and I was very impressed with the costumes and the cars and the manual typewriters and the fountain pens and all the other minutiae that added up to wonderful period detail. I’m a sucker for stuff like that, I must admit.

Then there’s the character development. They don’t just show the good side of the British, but the bad as well: war profiteers, racketeers and con-men; how people of German and Italian descent were hounded and despised, if not interred in camps as suspected Nazi sympathizers or “enemy aliens.”

And then there’s Chief Detective Superintendent Foyle.

We’re talking serious, full-blown intellectual crush here, cats and kittens. I qualify and say “intellectual” because DCS Foyle isn’t hawt and he doesn’t interest me romantically. He’s too short and too old, for starters. He’s also too close to my own personality type - an ISTJ² — but still, I love this character. Introverted,³ intelligent, and highly-principled, DCS Foyle can communicate paragraphs just by raising an eyebrow. ⁴

The problem is I enjoy watching the show so much, I’m not getting much knitting done, or the knitting I’m doing is, to put it mildly, not up to snuff. On my first attempt at the Back-to-School Vest, which is knit in the round, I discovered that I had changed the direction of my knitting at least twice, if not three times, during the course of a particularly intriguing episode.

If you know anything about knitting, this is not good.

If you don’t know anything about knitting, suffice it to say that I started knitting in the wrong direction. Hard to explain; easy to do.

Perhaps I should move on to less interesting programs.

Yeah, right.

1. Politically Correct [↩]
2. Meyer’s Briggs personality typing - Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging. We’re known as Examiners or Inspectors because we’re truly interested in facts, not feelings or other fuzzy-thinking nonsense. Just the facts, ma’am. [↩]
3. One of the fan web sites I discovered is named The Quietly Enigmatic Forum [↩]
4. I’m claiming “fair use” for the pics from the show: I could locate no free or public domain images; it does not limit the copyright owner’s rights to distribute the film in any way; and it’s for informational, non-commercial use that does not detract from the film in any way. Blah, blah, blah. [↩]

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

- T.S. Eliot
(from “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”)

* * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * *

Aaron,¹ my plush pewter kitten, revealed his particular name to me yesterday. This is probably the second of Old Possum’s names from the poem — definitely not the last effanineffable, inscrutable name.

Aaron’s Name is Aaron Alastair Purrworthy III.

Christopher is still known as Kissy.

1. Yes, in the photo above — click for bigger version — Aaron is indeed sitting on top of the container that holds Gregor’s ashes. It’s a comfy perch, he tells me, and I’m sure Mr. G would not object. [↩]

Early Sunday morning web trawling yielding this little gem of a video.¹ If you’re a Cat Person, or a Geek, or even a Geeky Cat Person, this is well worth six minutes of your time. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy.

1. Originally seen over at Cute Overload. [↩]

This, cats and kittens, is a Chumby, and the widget it’s running in the photograph is called the Life-O-Meter.

I’m sure this raises all sorts of questions, namely, “What The Heck is a Chumby?” and “Laiane, Are You Some Sort of Emo/Goth Nutter, or What?”

The second question is much easier to answer: “No, but I do have a rather dark sense of humor which is more than likely exacerbated by my work in the Death Care Industry.”¹

The first? Well… My non-technologically oriented mind would call it a Cute Leather Beanbag/Glorified Clock Radio with a Wi-Fi connection blah, blah, blah Linux Open Source Software blah blah Touch Screen blah Internet Radio blah blah RSS News Reader. Um… I’ve heard it described as a “digital media receiver” and as a “computer designed by Teddy Ruxpin.” I found an excellent review of my brand new toy over at CNET and others at Daily Tech News and Wired.

My Chumby’s name is Castor (as in Castor and Pollux).² There’s a story behind that, too, but I’m not sure if I want to go into the meaning of Greek/Latin names.

Anyway.

The Life-O-Meter widget quantifies your time remaining (or your time already spent, depending on how one looks at it) into a nice little percentage.³ I’m sure it would be more effective if it had a partially-filled-in download bar-thingie that says “53% complete.” Graphic representations have much more oomph.

The Life-O-Meter is described as “the most depressing widget ever.” I beg to differ. Thinking that my life is 53% over has me more motivated about working on my projects — be they knitting or otherwise — than any other anti-procrastination self-talk I could ever come up with.

* * * * *

1. Well, the filling out forms bit of the Death Care Industry; nothing “hands on.” [↩]
2. You are encouraged to name your cuddly little device when you set up your media channels at the Chumby website. I’m not just being weird, here. [↩]
3. This is calculated by your entering your estimated life expectancy when you configure the widget. I figured 80 years was as good a guess as any. [↩]

A few things have kept me from blogging, the primary one being Lack of Content. And boredom. And Screaming Sinus Headaches That Make Laiane Rail Against that Powers-That-Be about Why He/She/They Had to Create Pollen. Inefficient system, if you ask me, but I suppose I will let it slide because there are some parts of the Grand Design which are much more elegant, like Conservation of Energy and Matter and Thermodynamics and such. Oh, and cats. I approve of cats. Very graceful creatures.¹

In any event, there was some major excitement going down on Friday when the Yarn Harlot made her Ann Arbor appearance to promote her new book, Things I’ve Learned From Knitting (Whether I Wanted To or Not).

I’ve been a fan of the Harlot’s blog for many months, and she is just as witty in person as she is online and in her books. It’s hard to explain to a non-knitter that there truly is such a thing as “knitting humor,” but the Harlot had 150 knitters laughing uproariously with her vignettes on the Ridiculous Things Non-Knitters Say to Knitters. If you’re a knitter, you know. The “patience” line. The “time to knit” line. The “You know, you can buy socks in a store” line.

The Harlot is a class act. She took the time to stay and sign everyone’s books (all 300 some of us), and pose for pictures.

That’s my good friend and knitting buddy, HunterXan.

And here’s me:

Click the pictures for larger images. That blue amorphous mass the Harlot is holding is my current knitting project. It’s the Knitted Baby Thing for my Pregnant Co-Worker. Since it’s an Amorphous Blob², I’m pretty sure my friend won’t be able to identify it from this picture. It’s the Elizabeth Zimmerman Knitted Baby Thing that every knitter makes at some point, and the Harlot was able to name it from 10 feet away.³

In any event, the Knitted Baby Thing is almost done. I hope to finish it today, so it’s time for coffee and yarn!

1. Most of the time. I spent a very enjoyable five minutes Tuesday afternoon watching Christopher stretch and roll over in his sleep until he finally fell ass over teakettle off the couch where we were sitting. He didn’t wake up until he hit the floor. [↩]
2. The knitting, not the pregnant co-worker [↩]
3. If you post a comment here, don’t mention the name of the pattern. It’s a “surprise.” [↩]

A yep. Uninspired with blogging and sitting in front of computers, in any event. I’ll disabuse you of the notion that I’m out frolicking in the spring sunshine. I hate intensely dislike spring. I’m allergic to everything that even vaguely resembles plant life, so spring is not a Happy Time for me, and don’t even get me started on the “Mr. Sun is Not My Friend” speech.

Cranky blogger is cranky, too, come to think of it.

So, while I’m off Not Blogging I’m spending a lot of time on the sofa watching DVD’s and knitting my little heart out. I’ve got a Baby Project on the needles at the moment that I’m feeling compelled to work on because I don’t think that my pregnant co-worker — no matter how much she likes me — is willing to put off going into labor until I’ve finished.

And then there’s the Cavern Cardigan¹, and Stefanie Japel’s Cable-Down Raglan Sweater, and the Ysolda Teague Matilda Jane sweater, and the Back-To-School U-Neck Vest from Fitted Knits, etc., etc.

I’ve got my Knitting Mojo on.

I’ll come back soon with pictures. Promise.

1. This just needs the sleeves, but have I picked it up lately? Nooooooo. It’s on the pile on my coffee table, on top of the Kitty Pi That Ate Cheboygan. [↩]

Every year for the past 8-10 years, I’ve given up buying books for Lent, and every Easter Sunday for the past 5-7 years, I’ve gotten up at dawn and logged onto amazon.com to break my fast.

This year’s selections are:

• The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, by Barack Obama
• How to Cook a Wolf, M. F. K. Fisher
• Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950’s America, Laura Shapiro¹
• Moleskine City Notebook: Seattle²

Every Easter morning after my book buying spree, I sit and write a check for an equivalent amount to a charitable organization. Lent isn’t just about self-denial — it’s about almsgiving. So what, Laiane, if you’ve not bought a book in 40 days; what have you done for other people?

This year, my donation was to Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres. ³

Welcome back, Jesus. Pass the Cadbury Creme Eggs.

1. An excellent summary can be found here. [↩]
2. In preparation for my planned summer trip to The Emerald City [↩]
3. If you’re a knitter, please check out Knitters Without Borders/Tricoteuses Sans Frontieres on the Yarn Harlot’s blog. [↩]

…beggars would ride.

The Finished Object is the Top Down Raglan Sweater in Malabrigo Marron Oscura. The wish is that we have a serious cold snap — at least one day when the temperature doesn’t go over 32 degrees Fahrenheit. I want to wear this lovely F.O. to the office to show it off, but, lordy, that sweater is warm!  I have reason to hope; I live in Michigan.  We had snow in April last year.

Sorry for the awkward posing, but I was wearing a bulky t-shirt underneath and I was (subconsciously) hiding my Old Lady Poochy Belly. I intend to wear this without an underlayer,¹ so perhaps I’ll get better pictures up later — or not. I’m terribly self-conscious about having my picture taken. Suffice it to say that this will serve as proof I’ve finished my fourth sweater as a Real Knitter and that it fits… and that I can wear it in public.

1. The Malabrigo is that soft. [↩]

The brown Malabrigo sweater is more or less done; I just need to re-knit the cuffs. The sleeves stretched an awful lot during the blocking, so I need to rip back 30+ rows and carry on from that point. Easily done, and I should have a Finished Object Photo up soon.

But right now, it’s LOLCat Friday! Then back to knitting…

As every self-respecting geek knows, Gary Gygax died yesterday. For those of you who aren’t Old School Gamers — you know, back in the days when gaming meant paper, pencils, dice and graph paper, and the most sophisticated piece of technology in the room was a calculator — Mr. Gygax was the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.

D&D was my first foray into fantasy role-playing games. Many of the gamers I’ve met online, whether in EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Vanguard, or Lord of the Rings Online, have their gaming roots in D&D. It was the ur-game for many of us.

I’m hardly qualified to write a tribute or obituary for Mr. Gygax. To be honest, I didn’t know much detail about his life or background until I started reading the obituaries and blog posts yesterday. There were many.¹

He was, directly or indirectly, responsible for my love of RPG’s. There probably wouldn’t be a Laiane Wolfsong without him. Oh, the Real Life me would be here, certainly; no argument about that. But my Ranger alter ego? That’s a different story altogether.

I’ve been waxing nostalgic over my D&D days in high school² when five of us would squeeze into the 1976 Ford Pinto my brother inherited from Mom and wend our way to our DM’s basement. We’d scarf down Cheetos and Mountain Dew, roll the dice, and have the time of our lives.

Me: Bridget, the elven assassin. Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say you’re sorry.

My twin brother: Graymaus Jamin Eroquil, half-elven Neutral Greedy thief extraordinaire.

And our friends:

Trebos the magic user. He had issues with casting area-of-effect spells on the monsters and killing his party members in the process.

Seymour the fighter, whose intelligence score was in the single digits. He would lose to his war horse when they played checkers.

Ged Lefto, illusionist, and creator of the songs we would sing on our car ride home. We called them D&D carols since many of them were set to the tune of Christmas carols. I had the Orcish Pirate Sea Shanty in my head this morning:³

We love to hear the cannons fart
While we blow your ships apart!
Upwind in battle are we!
Our victims run in fear; they smell us coming near!
Victory - We fight to win!
Victory -We smell like sin!
We are the scum of the land and sea
Oh, Orcish Pirates are we…

Did I mention we were really, really nerdy teenagers?

I found this tribute to Mr. Gygax on an online RPG forum. I think it captures what a lot of Old School Gamers (and Not-So-Old-School Gamers) are feeling at the moment:⁴

No matter what the edition, no matter the ruleset, no matter what the genre, all of our differences aside - in the end all that matters is that we play on. Next time you belly up to the table (even if your table is a computer desk) and have a laugh, next time your heart skips a beat on that saving throw, next time you’re down to the last hit point and the dice come up 20, think of E. Gary Gygax and play, play on. It’s the best way to pay tribute to the man that got us all at the table.

Thanks, Gary.

Amen to that.⁵

moar LOLCats

1. My favorites can be found here (Salon.com) and here (in comic form). [↩]
2. 1979 - 1983. Yes, I’m that old. [↩]
3. Not sung to any melody, really. It’s an Orc thing. [↩]
4. You can find the original forum post here. [↩]
5. Yes, that’s my very own LOLCat creation! Mine, I tell you! [↩]